Let's dance on (The Monkees) (LP 4420 - 4425)

The Monkees  The Monkees (CD and Vinyl, Rhino/ RCA Records, 1966) ****  

The Monkees  More of The Monkees (CD and Vinyl, Rhino/ RCA Records, 1967) ***

The Monkees  Headquarters (CD and Vinyl, Rhino/ RCA Records, 1967) **** 

The Monkees  Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (CD and Vinyl, Rhino/ RCA Records, 1967) *****   

The Monkees  The Birds, the Bees & The Monkees (CD and Vinyl, Rhino/ RCA Records, 1968) ***  

The Monkees  Head (Vinyl and DVD, RCA Records, 1968) *****  

The Monkees  Instant Replay (Vinyl, RCA Records, 1969) *** 

The Monkees  The Monkees Present Micky, David and Michael (Vinyl, Rhino Records, 1969) *** 

Genre: Pop 

Places I remember: Greg Knowles collection, Three Kings Woolworths, JB Hi Fi, Vinyl Countdown

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: (Theme from) The Monkees

Gear costume: Last Train to Clarksville (The Monkees), For Pete's Sake (Headquarters), Pleasant Valley Sunday (Pisces etc), Daydream Believer (The Birds etc)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7

Active compensatory factors: No surprise that I am a huge fan of The Monkees. Are you kidding me? What's not to love?

Zany humour, pop smarts, big personalities, catchy choons, dandruff, irreverence, harmonies, goofiness, the sixties, heroes, villains, sword fights, daring do, giants, rodents of unusual size...Hmmm. I seem to have strayed into The Princess Bride there, but you get the picture.

The first album and a later one have been covered already in the countdown, so I won't add them to the tally, but in the interests of completeness, I'll add them to this post.

The debut from Mike, Peter, Davy, and Mickey was album #320. 

I had this to say: Their debut holds up amongst 1966's great company! There are some great tracks on here, confidence was high and the production is spot on pop-wise. And as to the sneery idea that 99% of the music came from session musicians? Too words: Pet Sounds. Two more words: True genius.

The highlights: Gonna Buy Me A Dog (kidding! Although they were zany!), Last Train to Clarksville; Theme from The Monkees (it kicks off the debut album superbly - it immediately evokes those opening scenes to the TV show); Let's Dance On...There were no duds.

Mickey Dolenz is the star performer on the debut with his distinctive vocals (he's still at it in 2026 too - still touring and performing Monkee songs). He's not alone though - Mike Nesmith's country leanings are already apparent on Papa Gene's Blues and Davy Jones, the girl obsessed cute one on the show, also gets a shot on I Wanna Be Free (I'll Be True to You is a croon too far though).

Overall, it's a brilliant album, full of exotic musical sounds for 1966, and well deserved its huge success - the first of four consecutive U.S. number one albums for the group.

More of The Monkees contains more of what we love about The Monkees: Mickey's vocal led hits - She, Mary Mary, (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone, I'm a Believer; Davy's English inflected vocals that feed into his girl obsessed persona - Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow); Mike's country-folk rock The Kind of Girl I Could Love.

It also includes some below par or just okay filler songs. Peter Tork's Your Aunty Grizelda is undistinguished, for instance, and Davy's trite The Day We Fell in Love is a low point. Nevertheless, led by the mega success of I'm A Believer, it was a hugely successful album - The Monkees were at the peak of their popularity.

Headquarters was next - and the first real album where the monkeying around foursome played their instruments and wrote more of their own songs. Previously, Don Kirshner, the TV mogul, had stipulated that they were just to provide vocals. It was another hugely successful album, although success was shaded when Sgt Pepper came out shortly afterwards.

As AllMusic pointed out: Headquarters doesn't contain any of the group's biggest hits, but it does have some of their best songs, like Nesmith's stirring folk-rocker "You Just May Be the One," the pummeling rocker "No Time," the MOR soul ballad "Forget That Girl," which features one of Davy Jones' best vocals, Peter Tork's shining moment as a songwriter, "For Pete's Sake," and the thoroughly amazing (and surprisingly political) "Randy Scouse Git," which showed just how truly out-there and almost avant-garde Micky Dolenz could be when he tried.

That said, For Pete's Sake ended up as the soundtrack for the end credits on the show and Zilch is zany Monkee genius!

Their fourth album in two years, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. is the other album that has appeared already in the countdown. In my previous post I explained how I came to buy it: it's 1968 turning into 1969, I'm 11, and I am either playing sport, reading, or glued to the TV. One show I never miss is The Monkees - a group that makes riotous irreverent fun of things AND they sing great songs. As a result, I have this album bought for me, my first LP, from a local shop in Three Kings, Auckland.  

Here's what I wrote back in 2019: It's an easy five stars! A classic! It's a cliche, I know, but, as a pre-teen, I really did just about wear out the grooves on this album. I'm so glad I latched on to this at a young age as it set me up for a lifelong love of pop music. The track listing shows an embarrassment of riches - songs that have hooks AND an edge. Who else could do that in the late 60's? It holds up too. Each time I play it, it pops!

The follow up was The Birds, the Bees & The Monkees in 1968. It was concurrent with their film Head - the soundtrack of which would come out a few months later in 1968. By this time their TV show had been canceled, and their popularity had dipped as a consequence.

The album is unusual, even for The Monkees. There were two big hits - Daydream Believer and Valleri, but the rest of the material isn't up to their usual high standards.

Head is a work of genius that is beyond criticism because my friend Greg and I listened to it so much it became part of us! We can still quote lines from it without any problem and we still crack up over those same lines. Nothing like the naivety of youth is there?

PopMatters got it spot on when they described Head as "a hypnogogic hallucination of a 60's pop record" whose composition encompassed musique concrète pieces and six new songs in the genres of psychedelic, Broadway and lo-fi rock. All that and a glass of cold gravy with a hair in it! Like I said, genius!

All band members contribute equally for the first time on a Monkees album and it's definitely Peter Tork's finest album. A fitting ending as he left the band at the end of 1968.  

Their first album without Peter is Instant Replay (1969) although several of the songs dated from sessions up to two and a half years earlier while Peter was still a Monkee. Tear Drop City was one of those oldies.

While not their best album, it does contain their usual mix of catchy songs (although there were not any hit songs coming from it), whip smart humour and familiar Monkee sounds.

The Monkees Present Micky, David and Michael is also from 1969. It was the last album to feature Mike Nesmith until a reunion in 1996. The highlight is Listen to the Band but the rest of the album includes some solid contributions from the remaining three members. For instance, Bye Bye Baby Bye Bye is Micky at his deranged best. Mike contributes some cool country-folk material before leaving to form the First National Band.

Where do they all belong? That's it for the sixties version of the band. Next up - the reunion, the live albums and a couple of compilations.